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Not overpowering. But what to Hero Points do? They modify results to prevent failure. SO therefore failure isn't fun. While that certainly has some truth to it, not failing isn't fun either. it is luck or intelligent play? I've seen situation where players take insane risks because they had a pool of points to fall back on, and ended up buring through thier points faster than the ones who ducked behind cover and didn't have to use as many (or mny) points to save thier skins. Game balance is a myth. All RPGs an inherently unbalanced in favor of the PCs, and "balancing" PCs against each other doesn't work because a great deal of what makes one PC better than the other is the actual abilities of the respective players. My caution here is that if the players get too much of what they want too frequently, they won't have fun either.

Why? Knights fought the grand melee on horse. I think the cards are a good idea, although I do think that you might want to include a way for the PKs to influence the outcome of the battle. Back in the earlier editions, there were scripted battles where much of the battle was fought using the normal rules, with the scripted events kicking in at certain points. I think something like that could work well with the cards. I also think that something like reducing the intensity or some such makes PK success more important to them, because the players get to see how their actions help (or hinder) their side.

Certainly. There is nothing wrong with quality items in a Middle Earth settting, In fact I remember working on crafting rules for my RQ Middle Earth adaptation years back. But MERP didn't really have them. It was RM where they mentioned the idea of non-magical plusses. Yes it is, compared to a typical FRPG like D&D. You have thoise items, pluys the elvish cloaks and ropes, adn the Paletirs showing up over a chrinocle covering 60 years or so. In D&D you'd see more magic in 6 adventures. Think about it. In a typical D&D campaign, when the PCs find their first treasure there are usually one or two magic longswords in the pile. Typically not quite enough to outfight every PC who wields a longsword. But nobody is worried because there is a very good chance that they will all have them by second level. High level characters often have to keep a inventory of all their magical items, which are more than they can usually remember. This probably came about for two reasons. First off the desire to capture the feel for LOTR. The problem is what works great for one of two epic stories can break down when it becomes a routine occurrence. The second reason was that back in D&D and AD&D magic items were really one of the best ways to differentiate one character from another of the same class. First that's much close to Excalibur/Caliburn ('cut-steel") than Strombringer. Tolkien drew of historical legends. Secondly the who First Aid has a magical quality to it which is much dioffernt from the late thrid age/early fourth age that most campaigns are set in. The Noldo really used to churn out stuff, although just how long it took them to do it is another thing. I completely disagree. That doesn't happen in ME. Far from it. The Similarrion is all about caring too much for for magical items, as is the story of the one ring. Even Bilbo cares for his magic items, he just doesn't value them quite to the same extent as one might expect, but that's because he has no need for them in his normal life. He only gets into a handful of fights in the Hobbit and then never has need of his magic items again.

Only in this case the reduction in value might not just be apparent value, but bits of precious metals coming off the suit!

That's why is was often referred to as RollMaster I was referring more to the characters's mentioned in the stories. For instance: Lobellia Bracegirle's +10 Umbrella that functions as a main gauche, or Merry's "Dwarven Horn": that magically acts as a 5th level Fear Spell and summons all allies within a one mile radius. Pretty much everything gets exaggerated to conform to the typical RPG conventions. Then there is the RM stuff that ICE created for RM that they ported over to their LOTR characters. Then there is the increased (typical FRPG_ amount and prevalence of magic. Magic is proetty much unknown to the hobbits outside of stories and legend, yet Old Tobdy is written upi as a 10 level Animist with a x3 multiplier trowel. I'm not concerned about the Westernese daggers and such, those are supposed to be special Yeah. Gandalf can probably do more that he is willing to do in the books, we get some hints of that with the Balrog and his almost showdown with the Witch King, but with the way MERP/RM is written magic is a prevalent and as flashy as, say D&D, if not more so. Most of the classes get spell lists for things. In many cases the lists just gave them a way for stealthy-woodsy types, such as rangers to be especially stealthy and woodsy, and probably would have been handled better as skills. Any GM wanting to run a Middle Earth campaign, in BRP or any other RPG, will need to decide if they wish to try to maintain the spirit and feel of the stories, or run a more generic high fantasy game set in a kind of Middle Earth, which will by necessity have to be changed to accommodate the abilities and gear available, and which could lose the fell of being Middle Earth, and just end up as a typical FRPG. I'm not saying a Gm has to do it one way or the other, just pointing out the situation. It's true of any game set in a week established fictional setting or a historical one.

One of the things abort MERP is that while ICE did a fairly good and faithful job description Middle Earth and the peoples therein, they sort of overlaid it with a typical FRPG game system that doesn't fit the setting. You can see it in the character writeups, with all the characters having weapons and armor with magical bonuses and such.In Tolkien String is a rare and wondrous weapon, in the MERP/RM character writeups all the fellowship and other characters mentioned in the stories probably has a magical weapon, or at least one with a good bonus. I think both the LOTR RPG by Decipher and The One Ring by Cubicle 7 do a better job of getting the feel of the low keyed nature of the magic of Middle Earth. In BRP terms I think most characters probably shouldn't have any magic to speak of, perhaps the odd witch of hedge magician. Dwarves would probably be able to craft some magical items, and elves would have much more, but there wouldn't be much in the way of D&D style fireball type spells. Just look at how limited Gandalf's capabilities are in the books compared to that of a typical FRPG wizard or his capabilities in MERP. If a GM want's to be true tot he setting then, they would need to scale down the magic, and BRP allows for that, with skills and other areas that the PCs can focus on. But, if a GM wants a more typical FRPG game, he will have to diverge somewhat from the source material.

In heraldry yellow and white stand in for gold and silver,m respectively. Thew idea was you carried a yellow shield into combat, buthung a gold one on the walls of you hall. I could see something similar being done with gilded armor.

That seems to be the case, but that is partly because RQG, is fairly new. There are probably examples of the earlier iterations of RQ or other BRP games, but things are considerably different in RQG for such examples to be counterproductive.

Well such armor for combat use doesn't make much sense. The knight would literally have bits of silver and gold flaking off or scratched off on impact but then I'ts not really designed to make sense functionally. I suppose a noble might just chalk that off to conspicuous consumption, but even then I would doubt it to be the "everyday" armor. Then again such nobles wouldn't need to wear armor all that often, if ever, and it certainly would have the enemy knights on the battlefield thinking of ransom. In fact ti might even get the enemy to pull their blows so they can capture you alive. Gold might be a bit on the cheap side, since gold is about twice as heavy as silver it would take twice as much for the same thickness, but I suspect that the gold plated armor probably has both a thinner coating and isn't pure gold, but probably an alloy of some sort to to keep it from melting off in the hot sun. So 10x isn't that bad. Probably most of the cost is for finding an armorer with the knowhow and ability to actually do it, assuming it electroplated, or for the sheet man hourse involved an hammering in or heat treating the coating to the plate, if it isn't.

Which Pendragon Battle System are you using?

It was something a looooong time ago (last fall I think). Something mentioned shortly after the video example of play, to kinda clarify some of the stuff he glossed over for his players.

Matybe, but that might be too powerful, as most casters will be at level 5 easy. Much faster than in MERP/RM. Not really. A Sword does 1d6+1 to 1D8+1 so they are doing comparable damage. This would assume a fixed cost for most spells. MERP does it by Level, but also gives characters a lot more power points than they will get in RQ. Note that this also assumes that spells such as Firebolt II would get some sort of upgrade over Firebolt I. So maybe up the damage die. I'd have to look at Spell Law again before I'd suggest just how much of an upgrade, but if Firebolt II upped the damage die a step it wouldn't look too bad, would it? One way to look at it is to compare the damage done by the attack to RM?MERP weapon damage. If a MERP Fire attack does about the same damage as a greatsword then yuo know you want to be in the 2D8 ballpark. Ah, I'll go through Spell LAw, but a lot of that sounds like standard RQ type spells. For instace the latter is pretty much Fireblade in RQ terms.. I'd say map it according to equivalent armor material. Remember part of the AT in RM is coverage. But basically Plate =Plate, Leather = Leather and so on. If that is what you want to do. I always considered Spell Lists to be a weak point in RM. You know, another thing you could do would be to run this in RM/MERP but with BRP advancement rules. It might give you more of what you are looking for.

Yeah, there is probably a huge markup because the smiths know anybody willing to walk around in real gold who doesn't mind it flaking off probably isn't going to balk at the price. Out of curiosity, I did a little research, number crunching and: It looks like modern flatware has a coating that is about 2.5% or so of the total weight. Assuming thar armor would bew treatred rougher, and would require a thicker plating, lets say 5% or so of the weight. A full suit of plate has an average weight of around 40 pounds, so we need 2 pounds of silver. Since the librum is valued at one £ sterling, we know that 2 pounds of silver would cost around £2. The time and craftsmanship required to coat every piece and probably add something to it to reduce flaking should be worth something. Lets say six of seven times the cost (so + £12-14) which (not) coincidentally is about twice the cost of a suit of plate. The armorer, to make up for his time and effort, plus maybe sensing a easy touch, doubles that to £24-28 , for a final value of triple normal price. Now Gold in KAP seems to be worth about five -six times that of silver, based on the prices of gold and silver jewelry in the Price Lists. That would increased the costs by as much as +£60-84, but possibly not as gold armor wouldn't be worn as often, and might not need to but plated as thickly, especially with gold being three times heavier than silver. Once again the armor applies a heavy markup, and we get to ten times again. I've been thinking of adjusting the prices towards the tail end of the campaign. TheGPC does have a major price increase due to the labor shortage from the Black Death, and I think it might just apply that to mail. but keep plate prices the same thanks to the ability to press it (which is what cut the price down histroically, and so would offset the plague increase). Not that the Pks would be buying much mail in the 550s anyway. I have a thought on this that I will try to take advantage of in my armor booklet. Basically mail get continually upgraded and incorporated into newer armor. For example: A poor knight in the Uther Period starts off with a mail haubergeon (8 points). He is rewarded during the wars and spends some of his treasure o replacing his metal reinforced hard leather spangelhelm with an all plate one, and having his haubergeon lengthen into a full hauberk (10 points). Time goes by and he passes this armor onto his son, who when he can, has it altered to fit better, has the mail hood turned into a separate coif, and again replaces his helm with a newer spanglehelm that is more conical, for Superior Norman Mail (11 points). After the Boy King Phase he can replace the spanglehelm with a great helm, and add ailettes, knee cops and elbow pieces to the armor turning it intro reinforced Mail (12 points). Over time the knight continues to add bits of plate and upgrades the helm to a sugarloaf and gets Partial Plate (14 points, although it probably is an evolution of 13-15 points, as funds and circumstance allow). He passes this onto his son, who continues the process eventually ending up in a suit of full plate, . When the old suit of mail is broke up into sections and sewn to the gambeson as gossets, which are also worn when the knight replaces this with White Armor (i.e. Gothic, Milanese and/or British Plate). So knights might not be replacing mail armor with whole new suits as as much as upgrading existing suits of mail armor.

Thanks Morien, I suspect mail wouldn't be any more difficult that plate, but then I suspect they would electroplate it. Electroplating goes back to ancient times, and it would seem like the best way to do it. Maybe Merlin brought the technique back with him when he returned from the East?

I think that was me. I've done a lot of conversion. You have a few choices here. The simplest is to give spells a fixed duration. Next would be to tie the duration to something to take take the place of level. Skill % with the spell (or list) seems the most obvious analogue. Something like level = 1/10% skill might work. Or if you want to you could adapt the sorcery rules and it's duration spell. Something else that could be tied to spell%. Something like 1D(spell%/10, nearest die). So someone with a 40% skill does 1D4, someone with a 60% skill does 1D6 and so forth. You would probably want to cap it at some point, and/or bump certian types up spells up or down a step. I'd suggest dumping the critical tables and go with RQs critical hit rules. But, I'd look at the Spell Law lists to try and work out Special Success bonuses for the various lists. You could catch on fire from fire spells, cold spells might affect your DEX SR and move, and so on. Yeah, that was my suggestion and I think it probably holds up well. Characters in RM have a lot more hits than characters in RQ, and a lot of RM healing comes in lots of d10s. You've got several possibilities. For AT (Armor Type): Bonuses I suggest adapting it as the Protection Spell or even Damage Resistance. The reason why ius in RM AT does reduce the max damage one can take from an attack. For Defense Bonus it depends. If the spell just increases someone's DB then I'd convert that as the Shimmer spell. 1 point of shimmer per 5% DB. Or, if you want bring back Defence from RQ2 you could have it add to Defense. If it is a DB bonus to a weapon or shield I'd consider adapting it as extra armor or as a bonus to parry instead. Depends on what you want. If you want RM spell lists then you could group the spells into lists as in RM and have the more powerful spells become available when skill reaches a certain threshold. You should also look at the cast tables to see how high a skill roll is requires o succeed in RM and use that to adjust the difficulty in RQ

How non-standard? There is some stuff in the GPC, and I have been working on a unofficial armor booklet and table based on the existing data and armor that has appeared in various supplements. If you could give me an idea of what you are looking for I might be able to help.

But I don't think it would be dead either. I think for something to be dead it would first have to be alive, wouldn't it?

Not all sprirts came from coproral beings though., I think that the Daka Fal thin is more for spirit's of coporal beings that have died.

What aspect of Spell LIsts are you trying to adapt?

Sure, if it is ground that they already covered. If they didn't however, the core system is extremely adaptable .

Yeah basically: 1. Both roll, higher successful roll wins 2. Winner rolls damage. Check knockdown and roll DEX or Horsemanship if required. 3. If withheld blows halve damage. If rebated or wooden practice weapons also halve damage (that stacks) 4. Defender gets the protection of his armor, and if he got a partial success, his shield.

Okay, I've got most of the information anyway. When I started this I thought all three used the same barrels, as why would they sell onew in 60 gallon barrels and another in 58 galon barrels but they did. I think I'll add the Amphorae to the list too. From what I've read most wine doesn't keep very long, as they didn't know how to keep it air tight. The old Roman clay Amphorae were easier to seal and kept wine longer, but were not a durable as barrels. I suspect a fair amount of the price for imported wines is probably to cover the the costs of wines lost from broken crockery. Amphorae would probably be more common in the early phases then fade out as the game gets more medieval, but make a bit of a comeback after Arthur conquers Rome and the knights get a task for exotic wines. While they appeared in various sizes, a standard sized Amphorae for wine did seem to emerge, at around 7.5 gallons (I'm not sure if that is US gallons, medieval wine gallons, medieval trade gallons, or Roman gallons), but for ease of play 8 gallons at x32d would work out best. fitting in with the progression. . If handy. I read something about that somewhere. I think they used to add it to wine to improve the shelf life, people developed a taste for it, and that is how fortified wines such as Port a Madeira got started.

I guess that means you'd be interested in some alternate takes on King Arthur too, like a "historical" Arthur.

I think you could go with something similar to how RQ handles associate priests. I'll suggest changing the name form allegiance to divine favor or karma or some such. There isn't necessarily a war going on between pantheons (even in Moorcock is was really a war within the same pantheon) so something like a general divine favor score could work better and help with the concept. Then if a PC gets singled out by one deity they could track that score as above. Although, you could ditch the allegiance point system too and run it as a skill that the character raises by doing things that please the gods. When a character makes his improvement roll the amount of skill it improves is equal to the alliance points he would have gotten. That way you'd only have to look up the awards at the end of the game session. When a player uses it, he losses the skill, just lie with allegiance. You could even have the skill bleed off a point even so often to reflect the fact that god are fickle an have a sort of "what have you done for me, lately?" aspect to them. If you did that Patron deities scores would use the base skill as a default and go up from there. Just brainstorming.

I guess that means I should finish the one for beer and ale?